REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATION 131and <strong>in</strong> which the text for national and ideological formsare written, then what exactly is that text and how arethey articulated and how do they engage with subjects<strong>in</strong> culture and society?For answers to these questions we turn our attentionto my read<strong>in</strong>gs of the two films mentioned that signify,<strong>in</strong>ter-text and articulate the nation. Darah dan Doawas made <strong>in</strong> 1950 by Usmar Ismail, who is consideredto be the father of Indonesian films. The other isPengkhianatan G30S/PKI made by Ariff<strong>in</strong> C. Noer <strong>in</strong>1982.Darah dan Doa is a black and white film recount<strong>in</strong>g theIndonesian struggle aga<strong>in</strong>st the Dutch colonizers <strong>in</strong> theirwar of <strong>in</strong>dependence. It tells the story of two heroes,both officers lead<strong>in</strong>g their unit, volunteers and homelesscivilians <strong>in</strong> a long march, through the treacherous andembattled countryside of their homeland, Java. Itbasically narrates the birth of a nation, and is a primeexample of the genre of “war films” that underp<strong>in</strong>s theconstruction of nation and identity, and <strong>in</strong> this respectit is a good representation of the collective historical“memory” of the nation. The second is a feature filmre-enact<strong>in</strong>g, <strong>in</strong> a quasi-documentary mode, the eventssurround<strong>in</strong>g the night of 1 October 1965, when seven ofIndonesia’s army chiefs were kidnapped and murderedat Lubang Buaya.My research and read<strong>in</strong>gs places this film as pivotal <strong>in</strong>the film’s (re)construction of history and its enlistmentof documentary codes and conventions <strong>in</strong> signify<strong>in</strong>g itsstatus and authority on historical truth, and its blurr<strong>in</strong>gof the borders between fiction and documentaryas symptomatic of trauma and terror. These filmsconstruct nation and history as a narrative exercise <strong>in</strong>myth mak<strong>in</strong>g.The themes of birth and death and executions, <strong>in</strong> Darahdan Doa of a father at the hands of his son, while <strong>in</strong>G30S between <strong>in</strong>ternal political rivalries, the forcesrepresent<strong>in</strong>g the father of Indonesian IndependenceSukarno and the sons of the nation. Love is shown<strong>in</strong> relationships between men and women, filial andfamilial relationships. These aspects of contestationsf<strong>in</strong>d their expressions <strong>in</strong> different spaces and variousforms, where rivalries manifest themselves as the “enemywith<strong>in</strong>” of post-revolutionary struggle as much as thosethat betray the military projection of itself as the family,the patriarch and guardian of nationalist ideals from thefields of the Javanese countryside to the <strong>in</strong>terior spacesof the domestic.These events and mark<strong>in</strong>gs, the gravesites for the warriors<strong>in</strong> Darah and the burial hole for the murdered generals<strong>in</strong> G30S, mark the land <strong>in</strong> the rituals of commemorationof sacred places and <strong>in</strong> the remember<strong>in</strong>g of sacreddates.Concomitant with these themes, <strong>in</strong> much of these warfilms, is the theme of writ<strong>in</strong>g, from notes and journalsto letters of officialdom. This b<strong>in</strong>ary oppositioncharacterizes these films, del<strong>in</strong>eat<strong>in</strong>g oppositions anddemarcations of power between the public and thepersonal.Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI is a film produced underorders from Gen. Suharto himself. In many ways, theconstruction of nationalist ideology <strong>in</strong> Darah dan Doaf<strong>in</strong>ds its logic and trajectory <strong>in</strong> the events of 1965,on the night of 30 September, and the subsequenttrauma of political cleans<strong>in</strong>g that spread throughoutIndonesia <strong>in</strong> its aftermath. There are no less than fivediffer<strong>in</strong>g accounts of the events, of which Suharto’sis the officially endorsed and accepted version for thenational polity. The film claims to re-enact history andis thereby a “truthful” account of that night, completewith newspaper clipp<strong>in</strong>gs, authoritative voice-overs anddocumentary footages of national mourn<strong>in</strong>g at the endas evidence of its veracity.The film proper beg<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> the ail<strong>in</strong>g Sukarno’s bedroomat his palace <strong>in</strong> Bogor. The first person to be <strong>in</strong>troducedis D.N. Aidit, leader of the Indonesian CommunistParty and his assistant, as they await doctors from thePeople’s Republic of Ch<strong>in</strong>a who arrive to adm<strong>in</strong>isteracupuncture on the sick president. The first realdialogue to be heard is <strong>in</strong> Mandar<strong>in</strong>. The structur<strong>in</strong>gof shots and the order<strong>in</strong>g of scenes <strong>in</strong> a discont<strong>in</strong>uousmanner dis<strong>org</strong>anizes spatial cont<strong>in</strong>uity around theabsence of the president’s sick body, which is shown <strong>in</strong>a series of extreme close-ups accentuat<strong>in</strong>g the empt<strong>in</strong>ess<strong>in</strong> the palace as a symbol of the space of the nationwhile suggest<strong>in</strong>g an absence of power <strong>in</strong> the president’sbody as the body politic, already threaten<strong>in</strong>g to befilled by D.N. Aidit and the Ch<strong>in</strong>ese doctors. In fact,the close ups of needles punctur<strong>in</strong>g the president’sbody already suggests the <strong>in</strong>troduction of someth<strong>in</strong>gphysically and culturally alien associated with Aidit andthe doctors from the People’s Republic, all of whom arecommunists.In this cavernous empty palace filled with pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gs andstatues of women, where the president is seen alone athis huge desk surrounded by books from Mao to Len<strong>in</strong>,the heart of the nation is be<strong>in</strong>g dra<strong>in</strong>ed by corrupt<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>fluences while a herd of deer, robust and majestic, arerunn<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the palace grounds outside, suggest<strong>in</strong>g that<strong>Asian</strong> <strong>Transformations</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>Action</strong>The Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows
132 REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATIONreal power lies elsewhere.If the sett<strong>in</strong>g suggests a power vacuum, everyth<strong>in</strong>g fromhere onwards <strong>in</strong> the film, with its concentration onAidit and his plotters, sta<strong>in</strong>s their actions as orig<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>gby association from the palace.The f<strong>in</strong>al scene shows Nasution’s <strong>in</strong>jured youngestdaughter ly<strong>in</strong>g alone <strong>in</strong> her cot-like hospital bed, theyoungest victim, recall<strong>in</strong>g Sukarno ly<strong>in</strong>g alone <strong>in</strong> hisbed from the open<strong>in</strong>g scene, except here she comesafter images of the people <strong>in</strong> national mourn<strong>in</strong>g. Thenation’s hopes and dreams lies <strong>in</strong> the balance betweenlife and death, <strong>in</strong> the fragile body of a little girl, but if, asthe scene <strong>in</strong> front of her father’s pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g suggests, she isnot a pejuang or warrior, it is precisely because her timewill come at the end of the film where death will be theb<strong>in</strong>tang (star) that confirms her status as a pejuang.The nation spaceSpace constructed <strong>in</strong> b<strong>in</strong>ary oppositions allows fora unity under realist representation and seamlessl<strong>in</strong>ear temporality as logical conclusions and closure,articulat<strong>in</strong>g spatial cont<strong>in</strong>uities towards a horizon ofthe ideal, of mythic homeland and future struggles aseternal. The presence of bodies with<strong>in</strong> these spaces thatsignify a fullness and plenitude po<strong>in</strong>ts to an absence of“other,” bodies, lives, and alternatives <strong>in</strong> social, politicaland cultural existences <strong>in</strong> other spaces consigned tothe edges of the map, from the abandoned hut <strong>in</strong> thecountryside to the cardboard shelters <strong>in</strong> urban areas.Where directors choose to depict and present landscape<strong>in</strong> their films, they do so by signal<strong>in</strong>g the “condition ofpossibility” for the “mascul<strong>in</strong>e production of landscapeand its practices of fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e enclosure” (Sipe 2004,92).The narrat<strong>in</strong>g of the nation and its ideology mapsout its struggles <strong>in</strong> public spaces, where duty, honorand sacrifice take precedent, deny<strong>in</strong>g the private andthe personal, which turns space <strong>in</strong>to place. Individualstruggles are firmly located with<strong>in</strong> the larger contextof the nation, the revolution and public life as epicspectacle, where actions and dialogues play out theirtropes for national consciousness.Land needs markers to turn space <strong>in</strong>to place, albeit stillwith<strong>in</strong> the larger agenda of nationalist public sites. It isfor this reason, too, that Connie’s father’s grave cannotbe conta<strong>in</strong>ed with<strong>in</strong> a Javanese landscape but is givena europeanised backdrop, lest the l<strong>in</strong>es of patriarchalorig<strong>in</strong>ation are confused for Javanese ones so that otherdeaths can f<strong>in</strong>d and sow their seeds of mean<strong>in</strong>g andmetaphor as historical markers of blood and sacrificefor nationalist soil. It is no accident that the first imageof the start of the soldiers’ march across Java beg<strong>in</strong>s atBorobodur <strong>in</strong> a long ontological l<strong>in</strong>e, from the executionof the treacherous father by the dutiful son, to thegravesites of Adam and Widya of their union <strong>in</strong> death,to the grave of Lubang Buaya and the aftermath of itsreap<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the mass miss<strong>in</strong>g graveyards of thousandsacross the Indonesian landscape.As has been discussed <strong>in</strong> this paper, this b<strong>in</strong>ary <strong>in</strong>the divisions of rural and urban landscapes, between<strong>in</strong>teriors and exteriors, sets the scenario for futurestruggles, from nationalism to militarism, that f<strong>in</strong>dtheir conclusion <strong>in</strong> the exercise of power and controlof the nation’s doma<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> the struggle for the <strong>in</strong>teriordomestic spaces <strong>in</strong> G30S.Where pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong> Darah are utilized to referenceand demarcate land and territory as significations fordivisions <strong>in</strong> ideological struggle as spatial constructs, <strong>in</strong>G30S pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gs specifically signal the limits of spatialencounters as conditions <strong>in</strong> the <strong>org</strong>anization of gender,hierarchy and power.Two particular scenes and sequences articulate theway <strong>in</strong> which gender conta<strong>in</strong>s and def<strong>in</strong>es space, <strong>in</strong>the way that landscape politics or, for our purposes,space and its management can show “how mascul<strong>in</strong>eforms of landscape… have produced the corollary offem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e enclosure, whether symbolic, social, physicalor architectural” and <strong>in</strong> the way they frame “their accessto space, that either expand or exceed the conf<strong>in</strong>es of thedomestic sphere,” and help actively shape “a range ofcultural, national and <strong>in</strong>stitutional spaces and, perhapsmost consequentially, the more spatially diverse andfluid spheres of <strong>in</strong>tellectual” (Sipe 2004, 92) and culturalthought and <strong>in</strong> what ways they produce mean<strong>in</strong>g andcontribute to national ideological agenda.In the open<strong>in</strong>g sequences of G30S, where Sukarnolies bedridden attended by Aidit and the CommunistCh<strong>in</strong>ese doctors, <strong>in</strong> ten to eleven shot sequences, theleav<strong>in</strong>g and enter<strong>in</strong>g of each frame shows pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gsof clothed and half clad Javanese women <strong>in</strong> various“fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e” poses on the walls, as well as naked fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>ebusts and statues <strong>in</strong> shots where Sukarno is read<strong>in</strong>g athis desk.As mentioned earlier, the palace symbolizes the heartof the nation, the body politic is ail<strong>in</strong>g, and power isbe<strong>in</strong>g dra<strong>in</strong>ed while Aidit and the communists are<strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g foreign elements <strong>in</strong>to Sukarno’s bodyvia acupuncture, so that dra<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g is a consequence<strong>Asian</strong> <strong>Transformations</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>Action</strong>The Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows
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Asian Transformations in ActionThe
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iiiCONTENTSAbout the BookAcknowledg
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V. APPENDICESCultivation of Transfo
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The Regional Project, entitled “C
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ixTHE CONTRIBUTORS(in alphabetical
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MYFEL JOSEPH PALUGA is a faculty me
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xiiiare common to nations around th
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xviiIt is reasonable and necessary,
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xixOVERVIEWCzarina Saloma-Akpedonu,
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xxiiiABOUT THE WORKSHOPThe 6 th API
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233Day 3, Tuesday, 27 November 2007
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JOSIE M. FERNANDEZExecutive Council
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237MARY RACELISProfessorial Lecture
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239NAPAT TANGAPIWUTInstitute of Asi
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Persistent problems, promising solu
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strategy found their way into a bus